2nd Sunday
in Ordinary Time
17 January 2021 – Salem, SD
1 Sam 3,3b-10. 19
1Cor 6,13c-15a. 17-20
Jn 1,35-42
Praised be Jesus Christ!
‘Look, there is the lamb of God.’ … ‘We
have found the Messiah’ …
Most folks miss the earthshaking impact
of these words from the Gospel for today. Lamb of God… Messiah? To so identify
Jesus is epochal; it is or should be world changing for us. Nothing could or
should be more important in our lives than finding Christ, than confessing
Jesus for Who He is, the Anointed of God.
Talk to anybody, or better, observe
carefully the truly good people in your lives, and you will find them centering
their lives on Christ. They are, to say the least, discreet about it, not
sounding the trumpet or drawing attention to themselves. You will find them
seeking the Lord in prayer not by playing the Pharisee, but by withdrawing from
the traffic of daily life to be with the Lord. May I encourage you, too, to
seek the Lamb, to claim the Messiah, Christ, for your own! Give yourself over
to prayer in your everyday life!
The important thing to remember,
however, is that this seeking the Lord does not start with us. It is the Lord Himself,
Who created us and destined us for Himself. It is the Lord, Who saved us
through His Death upon the Cross and glorious Resurrection. It is up to us to
respond to Him. We need to be responsive, like John the Baptist’s disciples in
the Gospel. St. John pointed out the Lamb to them and his disciples went after
Jesus. We are talking about an interplay of God initiating, of my responding,
and significant persons in my life pointing the way. Faith life works that way.
‘Look, there is the lamb of God.’ … ‘We have found the Messiah’.
Let me quote
again from today’s First Reading:
“Eli
then understood that it was the Lord who was calling the boy, and he said to
Samuel, ‘Go and lie down, and if someone calls say, “Speak, Lord, your servant
is listening.”’ So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
“The
Lord then came and stood by, calling as he had done before, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’
Samuel answered, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.’
“Samuel
grew up and the Lord was with him and let no word of his fall to the ground.”
Vocation and discernment! I recognize these
two words, vocation and discernment, as the overriding mystery in my life. That
is as it should be in the life of any Catholic, no matter what his or her walk
in life. In terms of that mystery of vocation, my life’s calling from God, and
discernment, that is, claiming that calling for my own with the help of
Christ’s Church, this back and forth between me and God is and remains unto
death unfinished business. I will never nor can I get tired of meditating on
the implications of my calling. I guess that is what makes the passage for this
Sunday from the Book of Samuel so important for me. Samuel’s parents,
especially his mother, pleaded with God to give the couple a child, and in
recognition and genuine thanksgiving, they returned to the Lord for all the
days of his life this gift from God of their firstborn and only son. To say the
very least, this was a radical response on their part to God’s gift. Radical,
perhaps, but fitting and proper: the offering of Samuel’s parents was consistent
with the truth of who we are and where we come from. We are not our own; all we
have and all we are comes from the God Who loves us.
In the face of this great truth, we (I
mean older folks like me) can only beg the Lord to forgive us our lack of
generosity in returning thanks to Him. I could have done much better in my life,
if only I had responded whole-heartedly to the Lord’s calling! We, the elderly,
have only reason to be thankful for God’s many gifts. We beg pardon for having
fallen short in returning thanks to Him, for failing to cooperate fully with
His many graces bestowed upon us.
In a sense though, this Sunday’s message
is meant especially for the children and youth. In that sense, I would surely
like to encourage young people, especially young parents, to be very generous
in responding to the Lord Who bestows His gifts upon them and their children.
It is the Lord Who calls them to cooperate in His plan for our salvation and
the salvation of the whole world. It is the Lord, Who speaks to them as surely
as He did to Samuel. I say, be generous, but perhaps the right notion would be “unreservedly”,
to give ourselves to God without holding back. Samuel answered, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.’ That is how we should be in responding to God.
God speaks, maybe not for our physical ears to hear, but He speaks to our
hearts. In return, we owe Him all we have and all we are.
Here I am, Lord! I come to do your
will. The point being that we can
never go wrong or have regrets for having turned our lives over to Christ. That
kind of responsiveness without reserve to God’s call, embracing His plan for my
life, is an act of obedience, but that act of obedience to His call sets me
free for all I can be.
Today’s Second Reading from St. Paul’s
letter to the Corinthians uses similar words, but makes a very different point
about steering clear of fornication and unchastity.
“Your
body, you know, is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you since you
received him from God. You are not your own property; you have been bought and
paid for.”
Chastity, purity of heart, stands in
that same logic of vocation and discernment. It is about singleness of purpose.
We are simply not our own. My life plans are not mine alone to decide. My body
is not mine to dispose of as I please. We belong to God in the sense not of a
servant or a slave, but of a chosen son or daughter, someone well-loved by the
Heavenly Father.
I said earlier that our living out of
the faith is a tripartite thing: it is an interplay of God initiating, of my
responding, and significant persons in my life pointing the way. One of the
greatest burdens in life is facing those betrayals of our trust by significant
persons. Both in the Church and in society, people entrusted with leading us
through life seem destined to fall down on the job. Too often, they betray us
and leave us defenseless. They can lead us down the wrong path and then abandon
us.
My simple and short message for today is
this: PRAY WITHOUT CEASING! Put
yourself in the Lord’s Hands! Be attentive to His Voice! Simple, honest,
virtuous living, through attentiveness to God’s Word in prayer will make of you
an anchor, a source of refuge for our world. We should start young to respond
to Christ and when we fail, we should ask pardon of God and of His Church and
start over again. My prayer for you would be that people could say of you what
they said of Samuel: “Samuel grew up and
the Lord was with him and let no word of his fall to the ground.”
Do not delay another moment! Place your
life in God’s Hands! Give yourself to constant prayer like Samuel!
Praised be Jesus Christ!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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